Other Leaf-Rollers 



have disappeared, leaving on the banks, as 

 the trace of their brief passage, wretched 

 muddy puddles soon absorbed by the sun. 



These sudden freshets bring a thousand 

 live gleanings swept off the flanks of the 

 mountains. The dry bed of the Aygues is 

 a most interesting botanical garden. There 

 you may gather many vegetable species 

 brought down from the higher levels, some 

 temporary, disappearing without offspring in 

 a single season, others persisting and adapt- 

 ing themselves to the new climate. They 

 come from far away, from the heights, these 

 exiles; to pluck this one or that in its true 

 environment you would have to climb Mont 

 Ventoux, pass beyond the zone of the beeches 

 and reach the altitude where trees cannot 

 grow. 



Alien zoology in its turn is represented in 

 the osier-beds, whose calm is disturbed only 

 during unusually prolonged floods. My 

 attention is attracted especially by the land- 

 mollusc, that champion stay-at-home. In 

 stormy weather, when the thunder growls 

 lou tambour di cacalauso, as the Provengal 

 calls it the most that the Snail permits him- 

 self in the matter of moving about is to issue 

 179 



